Today I ran into a little problem, nothing too big, but it got me thinking. I recently switched to a 60% keyboard. It’s super compact and saves a lot of space on my desk, which I love. But, I realized I didn’t know how to press the F1 key. Sounds simple, right? Well, on these smaller keyboards, things are a bit different.
So, the first thing I did was to take a good look at my keyboard. I noticed it has an “FN” key. I pressed it, and nothing seemed to happen. I then began to press different buttons. First I pressed each key one by one, then I pressed the “FN” key together with each of the number keys.
And guess what? When I pressed “FN” and “1” at the same time, it worked just like the F1 key on a regular keyboard! Turns out, on these 60% keyboards, you have to press “FN” along with the number keys to access the F1, F2, F3, and so on, keys. It’s like a little shortcut. After that, I found pressing “FN” and “2” together did what the F2 key normally does, and so on, up to “FN” and “0” for F10.
Then there was this “Esc” key. On my keyboard, it has a little padlock symbol. I found out that if I press “FN” and “Esc” together, it enables something called “FN Lock”. I tried it out, and it seemed to switch the function keys between their normal use and some other commands, like Help or Undo. It’s like having two sets of commands on one set of keys, which is pretty neat, now that I think about it.
- First Step: I pressed the “FN” key.
- Second Step: I pressed the number keys from “1” to “0” with the “FN” key.
- Experiment: I tested each combination to see what it does.
- Discovery: Found out “FN” + “1” = “F1”, “FN” + “2” = “F2”, etc.
- FN Lock Feature: I noticed the padlock on the “Esc” key and figured out how to use the FN Lock.
So, that’s how I figured out how to use the F1 key, and all the other function keys, on my 60% keyboard. It was a bit of a learning curve, but now it feels like second nature. These smaller keyboards are great for saving space, and once you get the hang of these little tricks, they’re just as functional as the bigger ones. If you’re using a 60% keyboard too, give it a try! It’s all about that “FN” key and knowing which other keys to combine it with. Hope this helps you out!
